Pulsant announces major board changes

During Howling's seven years at Pulsant has seen revenues rise from £10m to £75m

Pulsant, a leading UK provider of specialist hybrid cloud services, has announced that Niclas Sanfridsson will succeed founder Mark Howling as CEO, with Brad Petzer also joining as CFO.

Howling, who founded the business in its current form, will become a non-executive director of the company and remain a major shareholder.

During his seven-year period at the helm of Pulsant, revenues have grown from £10m to £75m, and the company continues to have excellent prospects ahead.

Following an expressed interest in pursuing additional business opportunities, Howling and the Board agreed to work to identify a new CEO who was able to stay involved with the business over a long-term horizon.

This process has now reached a successful conclusion and, with effect from 21st August, Niclas Sanfridsson will become CEO of Pulsant.

“I am very proud of what we have achieved so far at Pulsant, and there are significant market opportunities to enable the business to develop much further. However, now is the right time to bring in a new leader who can take the business through the next phase of its development,” said Howling.

Sanfridsson was until recently managing director of Equinix in the Nordic Region, having spent 15 years with TeleCity, TelecityGroup and then more recently Equinix following its acquisition of Telecity.

During this time he built the business in the Nordics from one empty data centre to nine heavily utilised facilities. Prior to this he was Sales Director for WorldCom in Sweden and has also worked with Telia Financial Services.

He has extensive experience of running businesses offering data centre and managed IT services.

“It is an incredible honour to be asked to become CEO at Pulsant and it is with great pleasure that I have accepted the role. I look forward to working with everyone in Pulsant to continue to build on its success,” he said.

CFO Graeme Mackenzie, who has been with Pulsant in varying roles for over 15 years, will also be stepping down.

He has been instrumental in helping the business to grow and develop, both organically and through acquisition, and remained with the business both times it has been acquired by new shareholders, including the current owners.

The decision to take a break from active business will allow Mackenzie to spend more time with his family and on other non-work interests. Consequently, following an extensive recruitment process, Brad Petzer will take up the role of CFO for Pulsant on 6th September, 2017.

Petzer was until recently CFO at Mercator Solutions, a Warburg Pincus-backed software and BPO services provider to the aviation and shipping industries, where he helped to significantly transform and develop the business, before closing another major transaction for its PE backers.

Prior to this he was CFO at Monitise plc for three years, a publicly quoted mobile payments company, and before that he held various senior finance roles at Telecity.